Re: [AD] allegro_tiled: a new module for parsing tile-based maps.

[Hilton Medeiros <medeiros.hilton@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 08/01/2012 06:15 PM, Damien Radtke wrote:
> Rather than copy the internal Allegro code into my module's source, I
> decided to add glib as a dependency, which not only gives me lists but
> also hash tables, base64-encoding (allowing me to remove some code I
> hand-copied from zlib), and a whole bunch of other utilities.
>
> I'm working on refactoring the code a little bit to try and figure out
> the best user-facing API. If anyone has any suggestions for this, let
> me know. After that's done and the API is more or less set in stone,
> then I'll post an announcement on the forums.
>

Hello, I would like to see tiled support for Allegro, but I think it is
a bit complicated to make a simple generic API for it. I will just blurt
here some issues that cross my mind:

* You draw all layers to a big backbuffer that may cross the texture
dimension limits of the device/card;

* There is no way to draw layers separately and making backbuffers for
every layer you can easily overflow with big maps;

* An usual use case is to draw only the `visible` tiles (inside the
screen box) directly from the layers, not from a backbuffer. But you
never know what a developer may want to do;

* What if I want to draw only a layer with a specific property, or some
properties? Or some layers.

* The `draw` API should follow the example of the al_draw_bitmap one
with at least `tinted` and `region` variations;

* What if I want to set the z for tiles with some specified property for
z-ordering?;

* Is there no geometries (line, polygon and rectangle) support?

* You added Glib (I like it too) and mention support only for Linux on
github. I think the Allegro developers must have a good reason for not
using Glib for Allegro. Maybe license or cross-compatibility issues for
devices like iphone and android (or even compiling issues on Windows)?

This is what I have right now.

Cheers,
Hilton

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